What Fashion Is To Me August 9, 2010

I spent the formative years of my life naked, and covered in mud. I didn’t care about fashion. Instead, my priorities were stripping off to build damns in streams and tributaries, climbing trees just to fall out of them again, and swimming with a seal off the ice-cold Cornish coast.

When I wasn’t inappropriately starkers, I was clad in a strange collection of clothes. I lived in oversized t-shirts, holey leggings, and baggy dresses. Clothes were an unfortunate inevitability in life, and my concern went no further than ensuring that I could run jump and skip in whatever I was forced into.

However, there was a day when this all changed. It was a rare “mufti” day at school, where we traipsed in in our own clothes and spent the day silently judging others on their choices. My outfit involved a bright set of floral dungarees, cut off mid thigh, with socks and summer school sandals. I didn’t care about what I wore, but I remember feeling light and quite cool. I practically skipped into school, full of anticipation.

Once there, however, I realised that school fashion was about far more than whether you liked what you wore. It was about whether you fit in with the trends, whether you stand out from the norm. It was, in essence, about what other people wore. I was mocked, quite harshly, about my sunny dungarees, and the occasion has stayed lodged in my mind ever since. When having a bad time, I sometimes feel like that confused little girl again.

Now, things have changed. I have rebelled. I wear clothes purely because I like them, because they make me feel happy, or sexy, or individual. Trends, to me, are fleeting moments. True style makes you feel good, regardless of the crowd.

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Funnily enough I was also late to fashion. A terrible tomboy, as long as I could get up a tree in it I was happy, and similarly now I will only wear things I like and actually it doesn’t matter if it’s fashion or not, only that I like it. Perhaps that’s a trait that comes of a carefree youth.

Who am I?

My name is Lauren Cooke. Freelance writer, blogger, fashion and shoe addict. Committed to eBay, fashion errors and vintage clothes. I spend far too much money with reckless (budgeted) abandon, and like nothing more than letting you guys share in the life of a totally normal weirdo.